L l i !
LII
i».*
; f
i i Iii»
ff y
254 THE ATLANTIC. [ c h a p . IV.
regard as entering into the regular work of the
sections, hut which xvere only undertaken to give us
a general idea of the deep-water fauna of the West
Indian province, may he taken in connection xvith
one or two hauls made with the same object and
under the same circumstances, in water of nearly
equal depths, on the 25th of March after leaving
St. Thomas. The careful examination of the zone
hetween 300 and 1200 fathoms among the Mfost
Indian Islands will undoubtedly add enormously to
zoological knowledge. The objects of the present
expedition do not of course include a detailed investigation
of this kind, which must he done quietly in
a small steamer by some one on the spot, and will
require the patient work of several years. Even the
few hauls of the dredge which we had it in our power
to make brought to light a numher of new and
highly interesting animal forms representing nearly
all the invertebrate groups. A thorough investigation
of the belt must yield a wonderful harvest.
In dredging on the 15th, we got several sponges
helonging to the hexactinellidge, very closely allied
to those which we had previously met with in moderately
deep water off the coast of Portugal, show-
ino’ that the distribution O of this remarkable order
in deep water is very wide. Several stony corals
occurred, hut of all of these, with the exception of a
species of Stylaster which was very abundant at
this station, we got better examples on a subsequent
occasion. The Stylaster agrees very closely with the
description and figure given hy Pourtales of S.
complanatiis. The only marked difference is, that the
primary and secondary septa do not unite to the same
Oi
I
iy".
•K>
wE
<-i
A.
.U'